It has been a good weekend, no stress, no wobbles, lots of flop time but also enough concentration to read a book – nothing worthy, but a good sign. And today the new larger trainers came – and the fancy running socks that I ordered in the sale as well. All is well and a trip to the gym added no new blisters, so the expansion space theory works.
As well as the gym the doctor recommended MoodGym – an online version of CBT. It would be quite useful as new material but I am that annoying person – an informed patient. So none of it is new to me however it did remind me of questions worth revisiting.
Before my counselling my major issues were around not being accepted and not being loveable. These were lived out in different directions, when it came to my personal identity I more or less gave up, I wasn’t loveable, likable, and a misfit socially. I dressed as if I didn’t care because why bother etc. On the other hand we all need to feel we belong somehow and because I didn’t as a person, then I had to find acceptance through achievement – at first this came through praise from teachers at school because book work suited me and I could succeed. However the flip side of this was a fear that if achievement slipped then I would no longer belong.
We covered a lot of ground that year of my full crash – I learned to love myself and believe I am loveable, able to finally hear what some people had been saying all along; I invested in getting my ‘colours done’ (because I was worth it) and said hello to a confident me. That rise in self esteem reduced the need to gain the acceptance through achievement, but you cannot easily undo decades of thinking.
Whilst therapy was looking at feeling accepted regardless of achievement at the same time I was in college being continually assessed to see if I would be up to being a minister or not, and I lived in fear that they would decide I couldn’t and reject me after years of working towards this single thing. And even as I began to work with my churches a report came with me that queried whether full time was appropriate for me with my health situation (not just the depression).
So I came into ministry with things that still needed to be proved, and the very real questions echoed and perhaps reinforced my childhood fears. So here I am, on my first sick note since college and the guilt and fear rose up to bite me – hard. And as I look over the last year or so I see a new minister doing lots of exciting things but also feeling the need to have lots of Good Things to go down on the record – in other words not just to be/become a good minister but to prove it somehow, even though no longer on the radar of those to whom I might want to prove the point.
On one level all new ministers come excited and with lots of energy to do what they have waited for all that time and in my case my personality is ideas and possibilities – so I probably would still have done all I have done over the past couple of years. Yet I have to stop and consider my inner voices, and whether now I am away from a time of ‘proving’ I need to tackle them, because sooner or later I am going to have to face failure full on – and my wiring right now will not be up to it.
Just as well a retreat coming up – not that I am short of reflection time on sick leave, but there is something about a retreat venue (and the fact I can’t fill the time with TV) that offers the climate of expectation.
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